Gods & Mortals

by Various Authors

  Mereneth bowed her head. ‘The battle is finished in the great chamber,’ she said.

  ‘Any survivors?’

  ‘Some. All the families involved will be greatly diminished.’

  Neferata nodded in satisfaction. ‘Good.’ Vorst’s assassins, chosen by her, had done their job well. Where there had been two powerful houses of uncertain loyalty, now there was a single, weaker one that would be hers entirely.

  ‘I’m curious,’ said Mereneth. ‘How did you know Evered would give his life for Karya?’

  ‘I saw his devotion when they asked for my consent to their union. He was consumed with love for her. This made his actions utterly predictable.’

  ‘And it was Vorst who killed Therul?’ Mereneth asked.

  ‘Yes. The union of the two houses gave him the opportunity to stage this massacre.’

  ‘What did you tell Karya about his motives?’

  ‘The truth. That he believed this would earn my favour. I simply did not tell her that I encouraged him in this belief.’

  Mereneth chuckled. ‘You hold her love with a dark truth.’

  ‘Darkness is the key, Mereneth. Look to the darkness in which your enemy operates, that shrouds a rival, that lives in the heart of a friend. Then find a deeper darkness, and use it.’ Neferata smiled, tasting the night. ‘Always seek the darkness,’ she repeated. ‘Always go deeper.’

  She ran her fingers over the parapet, and savoured the feel of obsidian between bone.

  BLACKTALON: HUNTING SHADOWS

  Andy Clark

  Neave Blacktalon prowled in the shadow of a towering throne, through the cool shade of the ancient monolith and back out into searing heat, then back through shadow again. The Knight-Zephyros’ whirlwind axes were lashed firmly to her armoured back. They were ready to be drawn forth at a heartbeat’s notice, and her hands itched to swing them.

  ‘The sooner something gives me the excuse…’ she murmured to herself, keen to be moving, hunting again.

  She had her helm off, the better to stretch her superhuman senses out and taste her surroundings. Her hawk-like vision, her acute senses of taste, smell and hearing, her incredible sensitivity to vibrations in the air and soil – all were bent to absorbing every detail of this region of Aqshy. Known as the Brazen Plains, this region was as rugged as any she had seen in the Realm of Fire. Neave could tell that the cracked earth upon which she paced had been fertile until about three decades ago, when some catastrophe had scoured away the topsoil and salted what remained. She could sense the tectonic rumbling of a range of volcanoes two hundred miles due east, and tracked the passage of an arid dust-storm perhaps half that distance to her south.

  Neave hunted alone. She had done so for four years and two Reforgings, through a dozen hunts for the most dangerous quarry Sigmar could assign her, and she had never once failed to bring down her mark. Of course, it was different when her Vanguard chamber, the Shadowhammers, marched out as one. Neave could strategise and lead as well as the next Stormcast officer, and she knew the value of the warriors she fought alongside. They were Hammers of Sigmar, first forged and still the mightiest of all Sigmar’s Stormhosts. Yet even at such times, she was the one to hunt her mark amidst the mayhem of the battlefield. She was the one to launch herself upon them at the crucial moment, whirlwind axes singing a terrible dirge as they clove the air again and again.

  Her comrades fought to give her the opening she required, but it was Neave who ended the hunt.

  Alone.

  ‘But not this time, apparently,’ she said aloud, stopping for a moment in the throne’s shadow and staring up at it. A remnant of some old and magnificent wonder from the Age of Myth, the marble throne jutted drunkenly from the bedrock, pitted and riven. ‘This time I am to have aid in my hunt. Why?’

  Neave resumed her pacing, flicking irritated glances westwards. She sensed her comrades drawing closer from that direction, travelling at speed. The missive had been brought to her by an aetherwing, one of the highly intelligent birds of prey that aided the Stormcast Vanguard. The creature had found her as she loped across the Brazen Plains, tracking her mark.

  The bird had swept overhead and cried at her to halt in its eerie, singsong voice. Neave had done so, waiting while the aetherwing banked and settled in the skeletal branches of a nearby emberwood. She had listened with surprise, then annoyance, as the bird relayed Lord-Aquilor Danastus’ orders to her.

  She was to proceed ten miles east, whereupon she would find the ancient throne. There she was to await rendezvous with Tarion Arlor, a Knight-Venator, and a band of Palladors who would aid her in her hunt. The aetherwing had no answers for her as to why. Blacktalon had merely been bid obey, and so, though she burned to be about the hunt, she had done so.

  ‘They come, at last,’ she breathed as she picked out a thin dust trail rising to the west. The unforgiving light of Hysh shone from on high, glinting off burnished sigmarite as her comrades approached. The Knight-Venator was aloft, soaring on crystalline wings with his bright-burning star-eagle wheeling around him impatiently. Below, a crackling surge of energy and whirling dust showed where the Palladors rode their wyndshifting steeds.

  Neave jogged out from the throne’s shadow, making sure she was clearly visible. The last thing she needed, she thought, was to catch an arrow in the throat from a surprised Knight-Venator. The star-eagle spotted her first and gave a piercing cry, swooping down towards her. The Stormcasts followed and, as the eagle shot overhead and alighted atop the throne’s back, Tarion Arlor spread his crystalline pinions and dropped from the sky. He thumped down twenty feet from Neave, raising a cloud of dry dust, then stood tall and favoured her with an honest smile.

  Arlor went helmless, like her, noted Neave. He was built big, even for a Stormcast, and she saw from the way he carried himself that his was a solid and resolute sort of strength. She noted the relaxed grip that he maintained upon his bow, the tribal tattoos worn proudly upon his face and the way his quick gaze assessed her as frankly as she assessed him.

  The Palladors appeared a moment later, lightning crackling and winds howling as they transmuted from their ephemeral form to solid flesh and bone. There were four of them, Neave saw, armoured warriors wielding stormstrike javelins. They sat astride rangy gryph-chargers that clacked their beaks and clawed the ground with their fore-talons. She recognised the Palladors’ leader, and a smile quirked one corner of her mouth.

  ‘Kalparius Foerunner, well met,’ said Neave. Typical protocol would be for her to greet the Knight-Venator first, as a warrior of equal rank to her own. Neave had little interest in such niceties, preferring to acknowledge those rare warriors that had fought alongside her and earned her respect.

  ‘Lady Blacktalon,’ said Kalparius and inclined his head in greeting. ‘It has been some time.’

  ‘Two years since we hunted the daemon Horticulous on the Thassenine Peninsula,’ said Neave. ‘Have you fared well?’

  ‘Well enough, despite our enemies’ efforts,’ said Kalparius. From his body language Neave saw the Pallador was pleased she had remembered him by name, though too taciturn to let it show.

  ‘Neave Blacktalon, it is good to meet you at last,’ said Arlor.

  ‘We have fought upon the same field more than once,’ she said. ‘Was that not sufficient?’

  ‘We have fought against the same foes, at the same time, but we have never fought as comrades,’ said Tarion. ‘You are the most famed of the Shadowhammers, Lady Blacktalon. I look forward to hunting at your side.’

  ‘The mark is away eastwards,’ said Neave, masking her irritation at the talismanic way in which the rest of her Vanguard chamber regarded her. ‘In waiting for your arrival I’ve allowed it to extend its lead. If it reaches the volcano fields, it will become far harder to track.’

  Arlor’s smile vanished. ‘The township of Sigenvale lies in that direction. Our orders from the Lord-Aqui
lor are to call upon that settlement on our march and garner what information we can from the locals.’

  ‘If they lie in the mark’s path, there may not be any locals left to question,’ said Neave. ‘We can waste no more time. Come.’

  Neave turned and set off eastwards. As a Knight-Zephyros, Neave’s inhuman abilities extended into unnatural swiftness, agility and reactions. Now she put them to good use, accelerating away in a blur of motion that quickly left the shattered throne far behind.

  Moments later, Tarion appeared low overhead, keeping pace with her upon his outspread wings. His star-eagle spiralled alongside him, and to Neave’s right streaking shimmers of lightning and air marked where the Palladors, too, had matched her speed.

  ‘You can keep up, at least,’ called Neave. ‘I can infer from this that your orders weren’t to actively hamper my hunt?’

  ‘There’s more to our orders, Lady Blacktalon,’ said Arlor, raising his voice to be heard over the swift whip of the wind. ‘Did Sigmar tell you of your prey before you set out?’

  ‘When Sigmar gives me a mark, it is like an epiphany,’ Neave replied. ‘I feel his power flow through me and I sense the prey, a notion of the direction in which it lies. At the same moment I may learn a little of my prey, of its transgressions against Sigmar and why it must be slain. I know of this thing that it is a horror hidden behind a pall of shifting darkness, and that it is ruinously powerful. A trail of devastated settlements and slaughtered heroes lies in its wake. I know also that there must be more to this fiend than that, for Sigmar does not set me a mark unless they have earned his personal ire.’

  ‘I don’t know what this thing has done to anger Sigmar,’ said Arlor. ‘But I know that, since you began your hunt, word has reached us of the quarry wreaking further havoc. They say it tore down Fort Dunhaven and slaughtered the entire garrison, then ripped its way along the Wounded Road and left three trade caravans and all their guards in bloody tatters. Chaos warbands are stirring in the wilds at word of this thing’s deeds. We have not long driven the enemy back from this region and, if this murderous shadow continues its rampage, it risks becoming a rallying point behind which a fresh Chaos onslaught may gather.’

  ‘I saw the ruins of Dunhaven,’ said Blacktalon. ‘The carnage was hideous. I was not aware of the cult stirrings, but I can well believe it.’

  Now the presence of these reinforcements began to make sense to her. There was grand strategy in play, and Lord-Aquilor Danastus prized expediency above all else. Even the sanctity of Sigmar’s hunt.

  ‘The Lord-Aquilor feels that this matter must be concluded swiftly, and with no chance of the quarry’s escape,’ said Tarion. ‘That is why we are not your only reinforcements.’

  ‘Who else?’ asked Neave.

  ‘Beyond Sigenvale, upon the headland above Brimstone Lake, we are to rendezvous with the cogfort Iron Despot,’ said Tarion. ‘The mobile fortress and all of its garrison will be at our disposal.’

  Neave almost missed a step as she shot an incredulous glance up at Tarion.

  ‘A cogfort?’ she asked. Sent marching out from several of the cities of Order since the end of the Realmgate Wars, the cogforts were the crowning achievement of the Ironweld engineers. Land battleships propelled on huge clockwork-and-girder spider’s legs, each cogfort was a mobile armoured fortress with a garrison of well over a hundred human and duardin souls and bearing enough artillery and sorcerous ordnance to level a Dreadhold, or to break an enemy army in two. These vast war engines had not existed for long, but they had already garnered great favour amongst the forces of Order.

  Lord-Aquilor Danastus was not given to grand gestures or strategic wastefulness. That he believed Neave’s hunt required this level of support was sobering. She glanced again at Tarion and saw her own thoughts mirrored upon his face. Neave set her jaw and ran on, west across the plains towards Sigenvale.

  Her ominous sense of the mark grew surer with every footfall.

  Neave knew something was wrong even before Tarion’s star-eagle, Krien, gave a piercing shriek.

  They had travelled for a day and a night, and on into the next morning, relying upon the supreme fortitude that was Sigmar’s gift to his Stormcast Eternals. The hunting party had spoken little. They were Hammers of Sigmar, grimly determined to see their duty done, and all their thought was bent towards its prosecution.

  Now, though, as they wended their way along the tail end of the Wounded Road through a nameless gorge, they slowed.

  ‘I smell smoke, and blood,’ said Neave as they drew to a halt in the lee of a mound of boulders. The part of Neave’s mind that was always alive to her surroundings noted that several of the boulders were actually graven chunks of statuary, piled in a tumble and eroded over long years.

  ‘Krien sees something beyond the mouth of the gorge,’ said Tarion, landing beside her. ‘He’s going to circle high and scout. If there are foes, they’re less likely to notice him than they are me.’

  Neave bristled at Tarion’s presumption. ‘Spread out and take positions here,’ she said, continuing as though he hadn’t spoken. ‘Stay concealed and ready for trouble.’

  Foerunner’s Palladors obeyed, splitting two-and-two to either side of the gorge, dismounting their steeds and melting back into the hard shadows. Tarion went right without offering further comment, dropping in behind the remains of a stone pillar and nocking a crackling arrow to his bowstring. Neave remained behind the boulders, sinking into a crouch and watching where the road sloped steeply up to the mouth of the gorge.

  The storm she had expected the day before had changed direction, moving ahead of them on capricious Aqshyan winds. Its trailing clouds streaked the sky, softening the hot glare of daylight to merely intense. Still, heat already baked off the rocks in waves. Dawn had come barely an hour before. Neave assumed that by midday this region would be viciously hot, and wondered how the peoples of Sigenvale coped.

  If the peoples of Sigenvale remained at all, that was.

  Nothing moved save a few skittering lizards, and minutes later Neave caught the speck in the sky that was Tarion’s returning eagle. Krien flew on, over their heads as though nothing more than a wild bird of prey, then circled casually down before streaking back along the gorge to alight on Tarion’s gauntlet.

  Neave waited as Tarion leant his head close to his eagle’s, locking eyes with the fierce bird. Its plumage glowed with celestial light, and it bobbed its head. Tarion murmured to Krien and the star-eagle made low, guttural sounds in return.

  Tarion jogged across to join Neave.

  ‘Krien sees no foes, just the destruction they have left,’ he said. ‘Our conversations are never what you would call precise, but from what I can garner Sigenvale lies in ruin. That said, just because Krien doesn’t see enemies, doesn’t mean they’re not concealed and waiting in ambush.’

  ‘The mark could be lurking here,’ said Neave. ‘But it’s doubtful. It is as though my sense of it is dulled by something, some obfuscatory magic or charm. I felt the same at Dunhaven, a warding that interferes with my gifts. I think we should bypass the town and press on. I will know if we overtake the mark, allowing us to double back and surround it here. Otherwise, haste is our ally.’

  She caught the subtle frown that Tarion suppressed before it could spread across his face, the slight tensing of his shoulders.

  ‘You disagree?’ asked Neave.

  ‘Not that we should make haste,’ said Tarion. ‘But there may be survivors.’

  ‘You believe they might tell us more of our quarry?’ she asked.

  This time, Tarion didn’t try to hide his displeasure. ‘I was more of a mind that if anyone lives in Sigenvale then it is our duty to aid them.’

  Neave snorted. ‘Danastus has sent me a bleeding heart, has he?’

  ‘We are the protectors of all Sigmar’s subjects,’ said Tarion, surprised. ‘We have a duty to these p
eople. We were like them, once, and we would not have wished to be left in the dirt.’

  Neave took a breath. Could the mark be here behind some warding veil, ready to spring its trap? She didn’t think so, but the interference with her gifts was maddening. She felt Tarion awaiting her decision. Though they were technically of equal rank, he had joined her hunt, and so by the customs of the Shadowhammers she had primacy. She contemplated ordering that they press on.

  ‘What if we stop to help a handful of wounded survivors, only for the mark to slaughter another town because we didn’t catch it in time?’ she asked him.

  ‘What if we aid any survivors here, and then catch up to the quarry in time to stop it hurting anyone else?’ he countered. ‘We are ­Hammers of Sigmar. Anything short of excellence is failure.’

  ‘Ah, not a bleeding heart then,’ she said, concealing her irritation at Arlor’s challenge behind a wry smile. ‘An optimist. That’s infinitely more dangerous. Very well, we perform a quick sweep through Sigenvale. Strictly reconnaissance and information gathering. If we locate any survivors, we do what we can for them, but we don’t get bogged down. We move on before Hyshian apogee.’

  ‘Understood,’ said Tarion, shooting a quick hand-gesture to the Palladors, who remounted their steeds.

  ‘Kalparius, you take the left flank, Arlor you’re on the right,’ said Neave. ‘We’re hardly inconspicuous, so move fast and keep your eyes open. We’ll meet in the town square, or whatever they have that passes for one. If the mark is here, don’t try to engage alone.’ That’s my job, she thought wryly, knowing she wouldn’t follow her own advice.

  ‘Krien will circle high and give warning if he sights any threat,’ said Tarion.

  So saying, he sent his star-eagle winging up into the shimmering blue. Neave, Tarion and the Palladors climbed the slope to the mouth of the gorge and then split, each following their allotted paths.

  As Neave crested the rise, she saw the ruin of Sigenvale. The town lay in a bowl-shaped depression perhaps a mile across and followed a rough grid of streets that cross-hatched the dry bedrock. Neave estimated Sigenvale had consisted of around sixty structures, predominately long, low builds wrought from quarried stone blocks. Their outsides had been painted white to reflect the intense heat, and diaphanous silken awnings had been raised on wooden poles to shelter the streets and rooftops. Gardens had grown on each flat roof, irrigated via capacious moisture traps and sheltered by the silk screens fluttering above. A high wall of dressed and cut stone surrounded the entire settlement, guard-towers dotted along its length with the barrels of Freeguild cannons jutting from their embrasures.